Please End This Muppet On Muppet Violence

On November 23, millions of kids and adults who love to act like kids will be treated to The Muppets, the latest film about Jim Henson’s beloved puppets, brought to us by the Muppets’ No. 1 fan, Jason Segel. Segel and Nicholas Stoller wrote this new take, and James Bobin of “Flight of the Concords” fame is directing. And all of the marketing, promotional materials and trailers suggest that this is going to be an awesome movie and disappoint no one.

That is, no one but Muppet conservatives. Oh yes, they exist.

The concern among Muppets insiders is that Segel and director James Bobin (a writer on Da Ali G Show and Flight of the Conchords) didn’t have a complete understanding of the Muppets characters or were willing to sacrifice the characters’ integrity to land a joke. “They’re looking at the script on a joke-by-joke basis, rather than as a construction of character and story,” says one.

A small example is in one of the many trailers Disney has released, when Fozzie makes a fart joke. “We wouldn’t do that; it’s too cheap,” says another Muppets veteran. “It may not seem like much in this world of [Judd] Apatow humor, but the characters don’t go to that place.”

That’s right, the Muppets are above fart jokes and we should be outraged – OUTRAGED! – that Segel gave Fozzie a pair of fart shoes. And if you think that the complaints can’t get much worse than objections to fart humor, well hold on to your bottle cap collection.

There is a list of similar concerns: Kermit would never live in a mansion, as he does in this movie. The Muppets, depicted in the script as jealous of Kermit’s wealth, would not have broken up in bitterness. The script “creates a false history that the characters were forced to act out for the sake of this movie,” says an old Muppets hand.

Gee, sounds like a bunch of sourpusses to me.

Frank Oz, the most famous living Muppets performer — known best as Miss Piggy — spoke more harshly in a recent interview with the British paper Metro. “I wasn’t happy with the script,” he said bluntly. “I don’t think they respected the characters. But I don’t want to go on about it like a sourpuss and hurt the movie.”

That’s like saying I’m not trying to hurt your testicles but I’m still going to kick you really hard in the crotch. I don’t want to take anything away from their scorn of someone who loves the Muppets and is rising in popularity (Segel) trying to keep his childhood obsession alive, as the old writers and voices – and even Jim Henson before he died – are all complaining that the Muppets have faded, but they do know that they’re talking about a show that centered around a pig trying to rape a frog, right?

And you can judge the fart joke for yourself in this trailer. I laughed a little harder than I should have.

What he won’t do, however, is the new Muppets film starring Jason Segel and Amy Adams, due out in February next year. ‘I turned it down,’ he says diplomatically. ‘I wasn’t happy with the script. I don’t think they respected the characters. But I don’t want to go on about it like a sourpuss and hurt the movie.’

I really really really hate to say this but I kind of agree. I’m totally looking forward to the movie but as a muppet afficianado and someone incapable of spelling afficianado I would like to have seen the characters remain a little truer to form. Can you imagine if the next Star Wars had Luke scrap booking and Han Solo waxing his back? Or Chewbaca taking a Mediterranean Cooking Class (he’s allergic to olives) or Princess Leia making out with Barbarella? Watto selling you a reasonably priced reliable speeder? Can you imagine?!?

Incidentally, I understand the whole moderation think and expect it’ll get better (: smarter) after a while, but it’s fucking annoying to have comments turn up upstream effectively retconning the whole thread. I’m steppin’ on invisible dicks all up in this motherfucker, ya dig?

Hey, I’m not saying it was all bad, just rather generic and bland. There were bits that I liked (the fact that it got made at all, for one) and others that irked the fanboy. And it too had some fairly decent promotional material.

Kermit estranged and living in a mansion is against character? Maybe Frank wants him to die of a mysterious yet common infection that brings the old gang back together to speculate about his sexuality. Now that’s comedy!

” . . . please hit jack black in the face with the bowling ball please hit jack black in the face with the bowling ball please hit jack black in the face with the bowling ball please hit jack black in the face with the bowling ball make it stop please make it stop please . . . “

Maybe I’m just an old fuddy duddy, and the fact I said fuddy duddy should be proof enough, but I totally agree that fart jokes are cheap. As are “ouch my balls” jokes. I get tired of seeing the cheap laugh written into every movie so that the idiocracy way can be paved. I also admit when I saw the trailer I thought exactly that. That the muppets of old wouldn’t have gone with the easy, cheap joke. Still, I am kind of glad for new muppets material, and if I boycott everything with stupid, easy, childish jokes I wouldn’t be able to watch anything new. So bring on the fart shoes I guess.

I’m as “conservative” about my childhood as anyone. I got violently incensed when they film-raped Transformers and GI Joe, even though I know that the originals were just crass half-hour commercials for toys.

That being said, the Muppets Tonight nonsense (and being owned by Disney) already compromised the integrity- I’m shocked and delighted that this film looks as “authentic” as it does from the trailers. This is a step on the road to recovery. Although it needs more Rowlf.

Fart Shoes is not a cheap joke. It’s just easy to point out and go “ooh, that’s a cheap joke!” because it has “fart” in it. People who don’t understand comedy always think they’re so fucking brilliant because they can separate jokes into “fart/non-fart” and “swearing/non-swearing” categories, but those are just bullshit superficialities that ignore everything else at play in whatever the joke might have been. There are plenty of funny and non-funny joke attempts with farts and swearing in them and vice versa. The idea that there are “cheap” and “non-cheap” jokes was invented by uptight assholes. There are two types of jokes, jokes that are funny and jokes that aren’t. It’s fucking preposterous to imagine a person delightedly laughing at something and then silently cursing themselves for their subconscious forcing them to delight in something of which their superego disapproves. LET IT GO, MAN! Holding in laughter is like trying to hold in an orgasm!

I believe it was the fantastic Louis CK who said, “You don’t have to be smart to laugh at farts, but you have to be stupid not to.” And if anyone says that Louis CK just doesn’t understand what is funny, or is out of touch, or that they disagree and fart jokes are cheap, then that person can then go fuck themselves.

Oz is right! We need to get back to the days when comedy traditional and thoughtful, like the original muppets intended it to be, variety acts where men pretended to be transexuals and hilarious shorts of three brothers mercilessly beating each other with hammers! Now someone get the writers of Fraiser in here to class that vulgar bear up!

I saw this movie as part of the test audience and it is totally awesome. It’s a great throwback to the original muppet movie and has great songs, fantastic cast and the story is hilarious with a good moral. Jim Henson would be proud!

I don’t want any highbrow condescension over fart jokes from muppeteers; I vividly remember a Sesame Street (or it might’ve even been on the original Muppet Show) skit where Kermit was reporting on some sort of race and/or training program for creatures that were pretty much just balls of hair. He asked a trainer what kind of shampoo they used on the creatures, and the trainer replied, “Shampoo? We don’t use shampoo; we use real poo!”

So they did a shit joke, years ago. No need to get uppity about a fart joke.

And let’s face it, none of the movies the Muppets have done have been Shakespeare. If they do one that isn’t “true” to the characters, it’s not like it will make the characters cease to exist.

Fuck, if they want to stay “true” to the characters, why not just dig up Jim Henson and have his zombie play Kermit? And if Frank Oz didn’t do the voices of Miss Piggy, Fozzy, Animal, etc., isn’t that worse than any script that has fart shoes and Kermit in a mansion?

For fuck’s sake; they’re puppets. Let’s not get bent out of shape over glorified fuzzy socks with some dudes’ hands shoved up their asses.

I guess everyone involved should just be happy there aren’t any fisting jokes in the movie. Oh, there are? No wonder it got a PG rating!

Ok, first I was going to say “you had me at, ‘lets travel by map’, then the shrunken head muppet, then the moopets, fuck all those “muppet conservatives.” I can’t wait and will be taking everyone ever to this movie. Also I am watching Insheepshin at this moment. Yay!!!

As said, I didn’t hate it, as some people did. It could certainly have been quite a lot better, but it could also have been much, much worse. It wasn’t gut-wrenchingly terrible like, say, Lord of the Rings, just numbingly mediocre.

I liked the look of the film, mostly, and the actors generally (especially Freeman, Rockwell, and Mos Def) did a creditable job given what they had to work with. There were problems with some piss-poor editing, where you had the set-up and reaction shot to a joke, but not the actual pay-off. If the film had been succesful enough to warrant the release of a director’s cut, that sort of thing might have been fixed.

It is certainly the most earnest incarnation of the Guide so far, with very little of the sarcasm and cynicism that (to my mind) helped make the earlier versions great. The whole cutesy happy ending bit in particular was just stupid bullshit, and flew in the face of every previous version of the story, wildly divergent as they may be. Even the worst bits of the old tv-show, bad as they were, at least had the grace to be amusingly so, like a trainwreck into a burning orphanage set to Yakety Sax.

Oh, and I don’t know about ‘pièce de résistance’ (look at these motherfucking accents, ye mighty, and despair). It’s certainly his funniest work, but I’d argue that the Dirk Gently-books are superior as works of literature, and he himself maintained (with good reason) that the one he was proudest of was Last Chance to See.

One more thing, just to clarify that Lord of the Rings-remark ’cause I know you were all at the edge of your seats, it goes like this: Fellowship of the Ring: Good with a few stupid bits, like overcomplicated müsli. The Two Towers: A fucking abomination. Return of the King: Pointless waste of time.